Operation Idiopathic Decline

This project is the Foundation’s most ambitious undertaking to date and represents the first comprehensive review of disease in quail. Following a sudden plummet of quail populations in the Rolling Plains in the fall of 2010, RPQRF urgently assembled a team ten scientists from four universities to investigate the drop in quail numbers. The science team spread out over 35 counties in West Texas and Oklahoma and studied the influence of pathogens, parasites, bacterial diseases, toxins, pesticides, landscape conditions and environmental factors on quail. Upon the conclusion of these investigations and sampling more than 2,600 quail, two parasites – eyeworms and caecal worms – stood out as serious threats to our wild quail populations. Accordingly, we funded additional studies to better understand how parasites adversely impact bobwhites.

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Operation Transfusion

This research program is focused on using translocation as a tool to restore wild quail populations to locations where they have disappeared over previous decades. Beginning in 2013, the Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation (RPQRF) began testing the feasibility of trapping wild quail from robust populations and relocating them to areas with quality habitat, but few wild birds. We have conducted 6 translocations across the Rolling Plains of both bobwhites and scaled (blue) quail since initiating this program. Our goal is to improve the effectiveness of translocation as a management tool to reestablish wild quail populations in Texas.

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The Bobwhite Genome Project

Although bobwhite quail populations have declined over most geographic ranges in the last 30 years, some isolated pockets of quail have fared better, despite similar weather, habitat and management strategies. Might these “survivors” have some sort of genetic difference resulting in an advantageous adaptation (e.g., disease resistance)? To answer this question, RPQRF sequenced the complete bobwhite quail genome – its “genetic road map” – in conjunction with Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The product of this research is enabling us to learn how genetic differences may play a role in disease susceptibility or the ability to withstand other challenging environmental factors.

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A Decade of Research Ranch Projects

An odyssey is defined as 1) an extended adventurous voyage or trip, or 2) an intellectual or spiritual quest, i.e., an odyssey of discovery. Yep, that’s what we’ve experienced since our dream of a quail research ranch hatched in 2007. An odyssey is often characterized by many, often sudden, unexpected changes in fortune. While bobwhites here “on the western front” are known to be “irruptive” and characterized by “boom-bust” populations, we have witnessed, and documented, the highest (2016) and lowest (2012) populations of bobwhites in the Rolling Plains since 1978, perhaps ever.

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